Someone made money off YouTube! A wife-beater? Who cares!

Okay, fine, YouTube figured out a way to make some money - and now it's boasting about it on both its Biz Blog and papa Google's main blog.

You see, the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video - surely you've heard of it, has made a bunch of millionaires even richer, and YouTube is rather chuffed.

In a blog post, titled "I now pronounce you monetized: a YouTube video case study", the company's technical accounts manager Chris LaRosa and music partner manager Ali Sandler, explain how the immensely popular video managed to boost mp3 sales for the Chris Brown track that played throughout the ludicrous scene.

Now as a full disclosure, I haven't actually seen the video. Due partly to the not-so-great PC I've been allotted here, which has some remarkable issues with YouTube (see photo) - and the fact that I've heard about the damn video so many times, that I feel that I can vaguely bluff my way through life with the basic facts: a wedding, some entertaining dancing (YouTube calls it "flat-out fun"), and a Chris Brown song. Good. Great.

Sigh.

In any case, JK Wedding Entrance Dance is nearing 13m views - pretty impressive, seeing how it's been online only a week and a half.

Using some clever video advertising tactics and YouTube's content management tools, the copyright holders for Chris Brown's song 'Forever' are expecting a windfall of cash.

An overlay click-to-buy campaign linked on the video, which gives viewers an opportunity to purchase the song on Amazon and iTunes, has resulted in 'Forever' launching to number four on iTunes and three on Amazon.

This traffic is also very engaged, YouTube said, the click-through rate on the "JK Wedding Entrance" video is twice the average of other click-to-buy overlays on the site.

And this newfound interest in downloading 'Forever' goes beyond the viral video itself: "JK Wedding Entrance Dance" also appears to have influenced the official 'Forever' music video, which saw its Click-to-Buy CTR increase by 2.5x in the last week.

Great work chaps.

Ooh, by the way, one little thing.

How frighteningly quickly the internet forgets, like a goldfish, they (we) are.

Was this not the same Chris Brown whom we lambasted and demanded repentance, boiling with (probably misplaced) anger, just a mere number of months ago, after shown photographic evidence of the bruised and beaten face of his girlfriend Rihanna, the end result of a particularly brutal row?

Now we're congratulating him - have a big pat on the back, now eh? - (and his holders) for making a few sideways bucks from an accidental viral sensation.

Stay classy, YouTube.

Me2everyone.com – not the next big thing, but what?

Twitter has been awash the last few days with chatter about a new social networking site called Me2everyone.com. It claims to be offering free "shares" and the chance to earn from £20,000 a year.

There are hundreds of tweets flying around about the site extolling Me2everyone's virtues and free shares, such as these:

@JoinMe2Everyone Have you heard about me2everyone? Facebook, Myspace and Twitter all in one! Free shares of stock when you sign up http://tinyurl.com/r93kv4

@M_Goodyear Me2everyone, a new social site, is getting better everyday! Sign up for free and get shares in a start up company! http://bit.ly/12KLAn

What's also interesting is that there have been next to no news stories that I can find about the site, however there has been a few blog posts written about Me2everyone.com, all suggesting it is some kind of scam although each time a post has gone up, people have appeared to vigorously defend the site.

Having spent the afternoon checking it out, the deeper you go, the more scam-like it seems. Starting at the top there is the management team. For people about to launch a social networking site that will take the industry to the next level you might expect someone with a track record. Or something, but there's no evidence of that. Its advisors for instance are Neal & Estelle Evans. You've not heard of them? Oh come on they are a semi-retired couple whose experience includes mining and oil projects. That should come in handy.

Checking out the site itself, on the face of it, what you get is a very basic social networking sign with a kind of "build your own out of a cereal box" look. The site is rudimentary, clunky and very dated-looking despite claiming it is a place where you "can meet friends, chat, shop, play, watch videos, create an art gallery, open a virtual newspaper, and make money from your own online store". It also has three or four different design themes going on with none of these having anything to recommend.

It is presenting itself as basically every social networking site you ever visited rolled into one, with a nice pic on the homepage that tries to sell the idea that the site is like a second life. When it appears to be not even close to the most basic site working on the web today.

As soon as you sign up what the site wants you to do more than anything is recommend more people to join. If you do you will be rewarded with more shares: together it seems we can all own lots and lots of shares. How much can a chunk of nothing be worth?

Hello Gordon

When recommending friends and anyone else you know, please copy and paste any of the examples shown below into your emails and blogs. You can make minor changes but please do not say anything that is untrue or misleading. We will be watching .

Would you like your own me2everyone business? Well, join our business team and discover a way to boost your share levels beyond 1,000,000 and create an income of of £20,000 ($30,000) or more. Click on the yellow button to discover more.

Thank you for helping make me2everyone succesful.

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Chris Anderson and newspapers, he doesn't care anymore

Chris Anderson, the Wired editor-in-chief and author of 'Free', has had it with newspapers. No seriously, he's through. He doesn't care. And journalism? And Media? Kids those words are so passe.

Anderson, who struck it big with his book 'The Long Tail' and wants everything to be 'Free', has given a long interview to the German weekly Spiegel where he makes a string of provocative statements as he talks about the internet's challenge to the traditional press.

Spiegel kicked off by asking Anderson about the future of journalism. The interview could have stopped right there. Anderson was already annoyed and made this clear. He doesn't use the word "journalism" and the word "media" is also a no no.

Anderson: This is going to be a very annoying interview. I don't use the word journalism.

Spiegel: "Okay, how about newspapers? They are in deep trouble both in the United States and worldwide."

Anderson: "Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a 'horseless carriage'."

It must be tough for Anderson who is (okay among other things) a "magazine editor". Sadly, Spiegel did not ask him about this, what it did ask him was what other words would he use instead of media and journalism.

And I have to tell you at this point things start to get really difficult. Apparently there are no words. That's right, like not at all.

"There are no other words. We're in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don't have meaning. What does news mean to you, when the vast majority of news is created by amateurs? Is news coming from a newspaper, or a news group or a friend? I just cannot come up with a definition for those words. Here at Wired, we stopped using them," Anderson told Spiegel.

Is it just me or is Anderson, you know, like full of himself? I wish to add here that it isn't only me as others have also noted this "fullness".

You kind of want to jump in and shout words like: content, editorial, commentary and analysis and ask: "Don't any of these words have any meaning? Are they all redundant?".

At this stage in the interview, the German "journalist" turns to the subject of "newspapers". I'm guessing here that as "news" has no meaning then it's likewise for newspapers. I'm kind of right here as Anderson really does not care about newspapers.

Spiegel: "So did you read a newspaper this morning?"

Anderson: "No."

Spiegel: "Your local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, is fighting for survival. If it was to disappear tomorrow..."

Anderson: "... I wouldn't notice. I don't even know what I'd be missing...newspapers are not important. It may be that their physical, printed form no longer works. "

Speigel: "So how do you stay informed?"

Anderson: "It comes to me in many ways: via Twitter, it shows up in my inbox, it shows up in my RSS feed, through conversations. I don't go out looking for it."

Speigel: "You just don't care."

Anderson: "No, I do care. You know, I pick my sources, and I trust my sources."

It strikes me that for a "journalist" (in part at least) who works in print to dismiss newspapers so out of hand as almost akin to biting the hand that feeds you. That could just be me.

Wired like every other print product has seen its advertising revenues plummet. The New York Times reported earlier this year that Wired has lost 50% of its ad pages so far this year, ranking it among the worst off of the more than 150 monthly magazines measured by Media Industry Newsletter.

How many people would miss Wired if it closed? Would Chris Anderson? Does he still want us to go out and buy it even though he gives the indication that he wouldn't got out and buy a printed publication himself (he'd have a point as he would have to pay for that "media", as it wouldn't, you know, be free).

He goes on in the interview to talk extensively about where he gets his news from. He talks RSS and Twitter. He loves these technologies (as do we all) and how he and others are still trying to figure out how we can all make money out of the web to fund our future.

All this comes after critics recently took a swipe at his new book, 'Free: The Future of a Radical Price', with the FT saying that the problem with Anderson is that he veers between sweeping statements and balancing paragraphs in a manner that leaves the reader unsure of what he is actually saying.

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AOL: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of unemployed journalists

AOL, the former dial-up internet juggernaut, now online content and display advertising somethingortheother, seems to be building a vast Ark - a rescue vessel for the unemployed journalists who were nearly washed away in the floods of the foretold mediapocalypse.

The internet company - if can we still call it that - is hiring, en masse.

Unbeknownst to most, AOL actually has a few cracking websites and blogs under its year-old MediaGlow (now called AOL Media) destination.

Engadget, Wallet Pop, Slashfood, Pixcetera, Joystiq, TMZ, PoliticsDaily - not a bad line-up.

No? How about the traffic, comScore said AOL Media sites tally in 75m monthly visitors in June, up 5% from last year. In fact, a quarter of Technorati's 'Top 100 blogs' belong to AOL.

According to a report on TechCrunch, AOL currently employs a walloping 1,500 writers, two-thirds of which are full-time staff.

That's twice as many as AOL had last year, and about half as many has the company expects to have next year.

The company is keen on highlighting itself as a destination for entertainment and content as we blogged last week, and truth be told, it's clawed its way into a little niche - and now its got the talent to boot.

Journalists who lost their jobs at titles like, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, USA Today, ESPN, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Consumer Reports and Condé Nast have found work at AOL.

With many more hires to come, it appears AOL, and its new(ish) CEO Jon Miller are focused on the future - hedging its bets on online content.

One might go as far to say the company is showing vague signs of life - splitting from parent company Time Warner, toning down its reliance on its AOL Advertising (nee Platform-A) display business, even looks remotely content with Bebo's position as a number three (or four, or five?) social network.

Hats off to Miller (and keep hiring those journos!) for effectively giving AOL some sort of vision, which is a lot to be said for a company that has changed its name six times in the last 20-odd years - Quantum Computer Services, AOL, America Online Inc., AOL Time Warner Inc., back to AOL (but AOL LLC) and finally, (as of today) AOL Inc.

Identity crisis? Perhaps. But to me, AOL means content, and that means something.

Blog profits, the apocalypse is off

In the UK last week blogging outfit Shiny Media went into administration, but across the pond Nick Denton's Gawker is in rude health despite his apocalyptic predictions.

Last Autumn Denton grabbed a few headlines when he said we should be preparing for a decline of up to 40% in advertising revenues. What he actually said was: "Anyone who isn't prepared for ads to go down 40% is crazy."

Well there has certainly been a lot of craziness since. Today Denton reveals the good news. First-half revenues at Gawker were up 45% as its ad growth continues pretty much uninterrupted. Nice work.

He's even updated his apocalyptic chart. Awesome, you have to respect someone who takes time out from the apocalypse (I mean there's all that Evian, cans of Heinz baked beans and flashlights to stock up on and that takes time) and updates the chart.

Obviously, Denton didn't sit around waiting for the apocalypse, he took steps. Were they apocalyptic steps? He cut staff and closed sites as Gawker reduced the number of blogs it publishes from 15 to nine. This included the axing of Defamer.com and incorporating it into Gawker.

But it wasn't the cuts alone that paid off. As Denton puts it:

"The plunge has already been pretty terrifying for a range of companies from Yahoo and IAC to the newspapers. But I was wrong in one respect: a few premium internet brands, Gawker's among them, have withstood the advertising apocalypse."

"Sometimes there's consolation to be found in congenital pessimism; I'd rather be wrong and thriving than right and dead."

As for Shiny Media, the sites (like Shiny Shiny) are gathering digital dust despite talk they might be bought. Interesting blog post here, however, by a former Shiny Media staffer who says one of the problems was the errrm lack of traffic and ads.

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Battle breaks out for control of Retweets

You've seen those retweet buttons on blogs and news sites, now a company with a killer name is launching with a killer app name (Retweet.com) that could allow it to capture the retweet market and from that launch a super fast breaking news service.

So far there is only a Retweet.com landing page, but the service is set to launch shortly and take on TweetMeme, which is already used by many sites to allow visitors to retweet their content.

Retweeting can be an incredibly powerful tool for websites, allowing users to easily share content, and sits alongside other social media tools like Digg and Reddit.

The killer app is in the name. Retweet is the term that those on Twitter use when recommending a piece of content.

Retweet.com is being developed by a firm called Mesiab Labs, which is launching it in conjunction with a bunch of other services that it says will allow it to deliver a really fast breaking news service. Key to this all will be the launch of Retweet.com, which will give it all the news.

This could, according to Techcrunch, potentially allow it to take on other aggregated news services out there "such as Digg, Google News, Techmeme and the new service that Bit.ly is working on".

Kevin Mesiab, CEO, Mesiab Labs, "Over the next year, we’ll be further expanding and building upon the Retweet.com platform. As we continue to refine our algorithms and data sources, we expect to create a highly competitive news syndication platform with unmatched capabilities.

"Retweet.com – Data is acquired from multiple sources (primarily twitter) and fed into our database. Data is analyzed and supplemented, then ranked and presented in common news formats.

"Rt.nu – Secondary data regarding story quality and real time popularity (interest rating) is gathered using our popular link shortening system, which is based on our link analytics platform (over 100k link redirections since release).

"CheckRetweet.com – Secondary data regarding user quality (story breakers) is gathered here using custom algorithms that measure a users reach and influence.

"Together, these systems allow us to detect and deliver breaking news faster than any other media outlet at present."

UPDATE:  Since Techcrunch broke the story about the arrival of Retweet.com things have moved on. It's a battle alright. Looks like Mesiab labs has "discovered" that one of its developers "had based a prototype button and widget on tweetmeme.com’s publicly viewable scripts".

Tweetmeme’s founder Nick Halstead has now accused Mesiab labs of deliberately reverse engineering Tweetmeme’s code rather than building their own to create Retweet.com. Much more on Techcrunch where the debate is raging. 

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Mag companies ditch online-only brands in favour of established titles

After Conde Nast gave its online-only men's brand Men.Style.com the boot earlier this week, it has emerged that Hearst's NatMags is doing the same thing. Or something similar.

It's rebranding GetLippy.com, the official website for its Company magazine, as Company.co.uk, which currently doesn't have its own site.

Launched in March 2004, GetLippy.com was a sister site to handbag.com and aimed at young women aged 18-24. (It was named Company magazine's official website in October 2006).

The relaunch, due on August 5, will allow NatMags to widen the site's target market to women aged 18-30.

NatMags has informed the site's users, saying: "We'll still be bringing you all the content you know and love.
"It's all still here - just under our shiny, new name!"

The rebrand represents a turn around in the strategy held by Hearst and other magazine groups over the past few years. They've been dabbling in creating online portals that group related print titles.

For example, in early 2008 Hearst grouped the websites for She, Good Housekeeping, Country Living, House Beautiful, Prima and Coast into Allaboutyou.com. Future has also been grouping its titles into new brands -- BikeRadar, GamesRadar, MusicRadar, TechRadar and PhotoRadar.

That brings us back to the US where it emerged earlier this week that Conde Nast is closing Men.Style.com, which is the home of GQ and Details magazine online, in October. The publisher said it will instead focus on GQ.

This all seems to go in phases. Back in the first dotcom boom portals were all the rage. IPC had Beme.com before it was closed.

Associated Newspapers had CharlotteStreet.com before that was axed and replaced by Femail.co.uk.

What does all this say for other portals out there like IPC's Good To Know? Does that have a future or are publishers done with these broadbased sites? Good to Know was IPC's second bash at women's portal after Beme.com that it launched two years ago. Watch this space.

Webstats and the New York Times homepage

No one wants to be ruled by web statistics, but they are increasingly important. The New York Times, however, says they have no impact on what goes on the front of the NYTimes.com home page.

That's kind of interesting. Anyone who works online looks at web stats and I certainly make some decisions on the back of them. If a story catches fire and is giving Brand Republic really good traffic the editorial team will, as they say, bump it and pump it. Maybe they don't say that. I mean bump it up the order, of course.

In other instances there will be stories that I personally like a lot, but you (the reader) have apparently no interest in. Why is that?

Sometimes, but not all the time, if it appears to me or one of the Brand Republic team that we are flogging a dead horse and no amount of giddy go girl will set the story a light in the mind of the reader, we will dump it. Yes, that's right, bump, pump and dump are all options online.

At the New York Times things are different. Jim Roberts, The NY Times' associate managing editor and NYTimes.com's digital news editor, told the New York Observer earlier this week that web stats have no bearing on what they choose to put on the front page of the newspaper or the home page of the site.

"In terms of minute-to-minute news decisions, I think that would pretty much drive me crazy. You know, I would say if I had more time I would probably try to investigate more in what our readers are doing.

"I guess I would rather know some broad trends, than some specific minute to minute thing, like whether readers are more interested in science news or fashion reports. Or if a profile of someone that I thought was a really really well written piece, if it sort of got miserable traffic, I would like to know about it and at least like to think about why that was the case, whether there was a message to be sent there."

Marketers think Twitter is a great idea, why doesn't the public think so?

Is Twitter mainstream yet? Advertisers certainly think so, too bad consumers don't agree.

A new study by Harris Interactive finds a polarising attitude between marketers and consumers towards the microblogging website.

About half of advertisers surveyed (45%) believe Twitter is an essential business tool and is poised to grow exponentially over the next few years, compared to about one in 10 consumers who also say so.

The other half of marketers find no benefit to Twitter (21%), say that the website's 15-minutes of fame are over (17%), or have no idea what Twitter is (17%).

Measured against consumer attitudes, more than two-thirds (69%) of the general public don't know about Twitter, 12% think it's poised for growth, the same amount believes its strictly for young people, marketers and media professionals, while only 8% think its time to find the next best thing.

Imagine Twitter as a hundred marketers packed into an empty room, bouncing ideas off each other, ready to pounce on the next oblivious consumer who waltzes through the door.

Marketers think Twitter is a great idea, why doesn't the public think so?

One might make the assumption that Twitter is not as mainstream as we - in advertising and the media - believe it to be.

The survey results show, that advertisers and marketers expect Twitter to grow, its effectiveness as a marketing tool will most likely hinge on consumer education: consumers need to learn more about what it is, why they should pay attention to it, and why they should tweet.

It is the advertisers and marketers who should play the lead role in promoting consumer education if they truly want to move Twitter beyond infancy and into its 'tween years.'

Nike learns lesson number one of social media, the hard way

Apparently Nike has not been briefed on the Streisand Effect.

To quote the bastion of internet memes that is Wikipedia: "The Streisand effect is an internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized."

The term was coined in 2003, when singer Barbara Streisand sued a photographer who took an aerial photo of her California beach house, and demanded the picture be removed from the website Pictopia.com, citing privacy concerns.

As a result, the subsequent trial raised public knowledge of the damaging photograph, which became somewhat of an internet sensation and spread like wildfire through the various channels of social media, in their infancy at the time.

The bottom line is that much more people saw the photograph than if Streisand wouldn't have made such a fuss in the first place, no doubt due spite - and to the nefarious nature of the act, suppressing freedom in an era of free.

It's common sense, and should be rule number one for brands dealing with social media.

Even the mere idea of trying to hide something should be ultimately abandoned, as the internet will seek it out, and air it for all to see, simply out of principal - even if it's something stupid photograph of some stupid house, among 10,000 others.

Imagine the backlash if a brand had something actually juicy, something actually worth sweeping under the rug.

Bad Nike, bad.

The sportswear brand, known for sponsoring the world's finest athletes, has a real cracker on its hands with LeBron James - the 24 year old basketball phenom, good enough to be the next Michael Jordan, if he could ever get a decent supporting squad.

But ultimately, he's brandable. And dependable, with a long, winning career ahead of him. Pure Nike.

So, when hosting a training camp for young college players earlier this month, LeBron James was 'dunked-on' by a 20-year-old nobody named Jordan Crawford.

A 'posterising' dunk (ie one you would find on a basketball poster), the ultimate humiliation, two-handed, over the head of the hapless victim.

Not something you want caught on video, your star sponsor being jumped over, dunked on, shamed, disgraced, mortified, etc.

Soon after the event took place, without much more than a few hoots and hollers from the hundreds watching in the stands, Nike demanded CBS, who was filming the event, confiscate all the tapes of the dunk - creating instant demand for said video, virtual currency.

Did Nike really think no one in the bleachers would be filming? Surely not. But its plan backfired, badly.

Of course, the video found its way onto YouTube, although admittedly taking longer than usual, about two weeks compared to the requisite two hours or so.

After watching the video (which I plan on posting, kinda the point of this post, no?) the dunk is hardly noticeable, and would have likely escaped besides a stray 'Didja see...?' among the few in attendance.

But no, Nike didn't want the internet to see it, so naturally, the internet sought it out, and make sure everyone else does too. It's Streisand, brands beware.

Saving AOL with the help of P&G

The analysts say the situation is dire, but Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL, tells the New York Times how he is going to save the company with the help of Procter & Gamble.

Former Google boy Armstrong tells the paper that: "If you tried to recreate AOL’s assets, it would be incredibly expensive."

This is true and so is the fact that no one would. For Armstrong it is a case of working with what you've got and building on it. He has to, but let's face it AOL is a funny company. A real hotch potch. Here's a for instance. AOL still has 6.2m dial-up internet customers. Pretty amazing, right? So is the fact that 200,000 of them cancel every month.

Its main business is (internet access being an increasing side show) advertising and content. It makes a lot of content and Armstrong is pinning his hopes on that being AOL's salvation.

Others are less sure. Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Capital, tells the paper: "Expectations from myself and Wall Street for AOL are still dire."

On Friday Armstrong will lay out his five-point strategy to save AOL: "AOL has a choice to make," he says. "We either lose slowly or win quickly. We are choosing to win quickly."

Do behemoths win quick? Armstrong tells the New York Times he wants to compete directly with Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google to become the dominant network for display ads. With Yahoo! and Microsoft cosying up that could be tough.

Armstrong is also looking at content. Definitely less competition here. Microsoft is kind of interested, but Google really isn't (it only wants other people's content…boom boom).

Armstrong is looking at AOL's 70 blogs, including PoliticsDaily, Boombox (hip-hop music), WalletPop (personal finance) and Paw Nation (pets).

To that mix he is going to add a lot more video. Armstrong is hoping that all this content will appeal to consumer products companies with big marketing budgets like P&G.

"If you ask P&G what companies have the products that make you feel most comfortable, with the best content and the best targeting, AOL is already on the list today. Our aim is to move AOL to the top of the list."

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Twitter and the small business revolution

The New York Times has a piece today about how small businesses are turning to Twitter in growing numbers and how the micro blogging service is helping them.

The Americans call them mom-and-pop shops, they're small businesses ranging from antique shops, to custom made ice cream operations and neighbourhood restaurants and they're thriving on social media.

They are becoming as important to Twitter and its growth as the big brand success stories like JetBlue, Starbucks, Comcastcares or Dell.

Why they like it is that it allows them to talk directly to customers and they can use it as a very effective word of mouth marketing tool to further their small businesses.

Anamitra Banerji, who manages commercial products at Twitter said that he thought it was all about big businesses, but to his surprise it is working for business of all kind.

Interestingly, he says Twitter is now working on teaching businesses how they can join and use it. Twitter is planning to publish case studies. He is also developing products that Twitter can sell to businesses (of all sizes). These are going to include features to verify businesses' accounts and analyse traffic.

The paper has great little anecdotes about how for instance Curtis Kimball in San Francisco who has a crème brûlée cart didn't really know what Twitter was for until he saw an unfamiliar face among the friends in line for his desserts. The new face in the crowd had heard about Kimball's treats on Twitter.

Kimball now has more than 5,400 followers checking out where his crème brûlée cart will be turning up next and what the flavours of the day are.

"I would love to say that I just had a really good idea and strategy, but Twitter has been pretty essential to my success," he told the NY Times.

The success of the crème brûlée cart has allowed him to quit his job to keep up with the demand.

The benefit as the piece points out to these small businesses is that a modern website might cost £3,000 to £5,000, but a Twitter account costs a lot less and better suits their needs.

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New York Times opens up to Mom and Pop advertisers

The New York Times has opened up a self-serve ad platform for a series of citizen journalism websites which fall under its hyper-local 'The Local' domain, covering east coast boroughs from New York to New Jersey.

Local "mom & pop" businesses, such as plumbers or restaurants, can now advertises on an NYTimes.com affiliate website for a fraction of the price.

The company said it plans to charge about $5 CPMs, compared to the starting $30 CPM rate to advertise on the larger New York Times website.

The Local, which was launched in February, made a point of building up an audience before offering advertising slots to local businesses, but admitted that "the folks at The New York Times know more about great journalism than we do about hyperlocal advertising markets".

The incremental revenue stream will provide little solace to the company, which has been publicly struggling under its debt load for the past year, at least until it can figure out a paid-for subscription model without turning away readers.

Spacey teaches Letterman how to Tweet

Apparently some famous people do not know what Twitter is? One such is David Letterman, but no worries, his guests know all about it and Kevin Spacey was on hand the other night to give the late night talk show host a Twitter lesson.

Spacey, famous for films such as 'The Usual Suspects' and 'American Beauty', had to give Letterman a few pointers after he asked "Does it cost you money to be on Twitter?"

During the conversation, Spacey (who has over 800,000 people following him on the micro blogging site) asks Dave what he'd like to say to 800,000 people because he'd "never get that many people watching him at night". Ouch. You have to be careful with those kinds of comments as Spacey found out.

Letterman bit back with a dig at the infamous incident involving Spacey getting mugged while "walking his dog" in a London park at 4am, by saying: "I wish my dog was here".

Spacey, who’s also artistic director at the Old Vic theatre, handles it well and continues the lesson, tweeting a message from Letterman to his followers.

Despite his efforts, Letterman wasn't that impressed and says: "You know what it reminds me of? Oh yeah, a waste of time!"

He needs to get Ashton Kutcher or his other half Demi Moore on the couch. The golden celebrity Twitter couple could set him straight. 

Blogs are big business…just not here

With Shiny Media going into administration yesterday there is a timely piece in the FT today on blogs. Yes, they're big business in the US (its like the FT just noticed), but here start-ups have struggled to replicate the success of the Huffington Post and Gawker. Is the UK simply too small?

We wrote about Shiny Media's fall last night and Lisa Devaney has blogged about it here as well. A real shame to see it fail. Maybe its strategy wasn't all there, it certainly had missteps along the way (like its move into football that resulted in Who Ate All The Pies being put up for sale), but I think the people at Shiny produced some very good work and ultimately it appears to have been a small publisher hit by the recession.

Its woes (I'm guessing) were no different to any other online publisher. There is not enough revenue out there. Not as much as anyone would like to support such a business.

What's clear is that while blogs like the Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, The Business Insider, Gawker and quite a few more do good business in the US, the UK market appears too small to sustain even quite a compact firm like Shiny.

This is a shame as I often think that media owners don't do blogs very well (The Guardian and a couple of others aside), but there doesn't seem enough advertising oxygen to do them independently and make a living.

Shiny is, of course, not the first UK blog start-up to go down. Glitterdtich closed last year. I don't know what Shiny was getting for its online advertising, but I doubt it was achieving the levels that newspapers are or anything like it.

In the US, as the FT notes, US blogs have hit the level where they are able to charge about what a big US newspaper charges for online advertising. The Business Insider's rate card for instance is up to $30 per 1,000 impressions. Gawker has a rate card CPM of around $50 (of course, it doesn't mean it gets that).

They are also pulling in millions of dollars in venture capital, but here the story is different. The Shiny Media was variously reported to have attracted $4.5m in funding in 2007 from Bright Station Ventures, but apparently the veracity of those reports is not 100%. With co-founder Katie Lee (who left earlier this year) saying: “It was incorrectly reported in the press and we were told to stick with the story. Was mortified.”

Shiny Media's blogs will no doubt continue as the company gets snapped up by someone (at least I hope it does), but it looks unlikely that anyone in the UK is going to be using blogging as a launch pad for anything major any time soon with the way the market is.

But it would be nice to try. It all comes down to the ideas.

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